KENYAN SEED SOURCING

By Heather Angell
January 23, 2006

Ken Mellish, Shaad Lingo, and I today began the task of sourcing seed for two of the Farming Helping Farmers projects; Ruuju School Feeding Project and Muchui Women’s Self Help Group. Our first stop was a retail outlet in Nairobi, Simlaws Seeds. The business carries a variety of agricultural products such as gardening tools, pesticides, backpack sprayers, and a whole host of vegetable, flower, and staple seed products e.g. maize, beans, etc. It was a modest store with little reference material in the way of seed catalogs or brochures but offered a wide selection of certified seed varieties and technologies. Seed packaging is done on a much smaller scale than Canada to better compliment the need of the numerous small subsistence shambas (farm in Swahili). We purchased three excellent resource books that covered production methods for over 60 different types of crops and for the animal husbandry to be stationed at the different project sites.

The store featured several seed suppliers with Kenya Seed Company Ltd. being one of the largest. The sales representative offered excellent recommendations as we discussed varietal options based on our criteria of drought resistance, yield potential, altitude, and soil regions. Unlike Canada, the store had many employees bustling about, as labor costs are inexpensive. Requesting a performa (invoice) in Kenya was an interesting ordeal. The request moved through many channels. It was manually typed and signed off by several persons before making its way back to the customer. This took about an hour instead of a quick automatic computer print off. It is then time to set up a meeting with the manager to discuss potential seed volume discounts and delivery options.

Drought has plagued many regions of Kenya this year from missed seasonal rains. The Muchui Women’s Group at Meru is included in the drought affected areas. From initial visits by Ken and Teresa it was discovered that seed stocks for next year were already gone to meet the short term food demands. The goal of the seed purchase was to obtain enough seed for the upcoming planting season (mid-March). We want to ensure that the women will have enough food for the next year and to introduce new food types to the area that provide good nutritional value and are well suited to dry conditions. Seed purchased will be distributed among 62 farms in the area. Seed was also purchased for the Ruuju School Feeding Project to compliment seeds previously donated by Vesey Seeds Ltd.

Seed Varieties:
Muchui Women’s Group:
Maize:
DH02 & DH04 - hybrid variety with high yield potential for a short season crop and well suited for dry areas
Katumani- open pollinated variety with slightly lower yield potential but the option of keeping reserve seed stock for future use so it is not necessary to purchase new seed each year.
Dry Beans:
Mwitemania- women familiar with variety, good cooking features, and blight tolerant
New Mwezi Moja - new improved variety with drought tolerance
Green Grams (similar to the desi chickpea) and a hybrid sunflower variety (Hybrid 8998) are not currently being grown in the area but were purchased to experiment with because of their nutritional value, oilseed content, and most of all drought heartiness.

Rujuu School Feeding Project:
Dry Beans (same varieties as Muchui), maize (Hybrid 516 for higher elevations) and Cow Peas were purchased. Cow peas are very beneficial as both the leaves and beans are high in nutritional value.

In summary, one morning in the local seed shop has given us the ability to replenish desperately need staple food sources as well as to provide new varietal opportunities with which the women can experiment.